GENEVA (Sputnik) — UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Ra’ad Hussein said Monday that he was concerned by the growing number of detentions of law-abiding migrants in the United States in 2017 compared with the same period last year.
"I am disturbed by the increase in detentions and deportations of well-established and law-abiding immigrants: the number of migrants detained who had no criminal convictions was 155% higher in the first five months of this year than in the equivalent period in 2016," Zeid said at the opening of the 36th session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, as quoted in the UN Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner's (OHCHR) statement.
The top UN official's statement came amid continuing disputes over the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) policy in the United States.
As the White House decided to scrap the DACA policy, which protects thousands of illegal migrants who were brought to the US as children from deportation, a number of prominent American public figures blasted US President Donald Trump and his administration for the move.
In August this year, nearly 1,500 US economists sent a letter to Trump stating that the US economy benefits from immigrants. The economists argued that without a healthy inflow of immigrants, the US labor force would soon be in decline, with manufacturing, agriculture, construction and the high-tech sectors suffering the most.
